Department Of Homeland Security Inaction At the Top

There is a lot more that could have been done ahead of time. First of all, we could have had a viable evacuation plan that included getting out the people who can't drive out. China evacuated over 600,000 people a couple of weeks ago ahead of a typhoon. Most of them did not have private cars. It CAN be done. It is a matter or will and planning. What won't work and we knew it wouldn't work is to tell everyone to leave 24 hr ahead of the storm when there have been no "drills" ahead of time and no provision is made for people needing transport. Is it expensive? Sure, but it would have saved lives AND money in the long term.Second, the dikes could have been reinforced and raised to cover a cat 5 hurricane. Again, we knew it was a possibility. No we can't remove the threat entirely but we could have prevented flooding this time if the recommendations of FEMA's own experts on the ground in NO had been followed.On edit: By the way we have known at least since the 1920s that the events brought on by Katrina were a possibility and it was ranked by Homeland Security as one of the top three disasters that should be prepared for so it doesn't wash to holler "hindsight is 20/20."This message has been edited by deerbreh, 09-08-2005 11:04 PM

Yep. And if one was serious one would have a database containing the following information:
names and addresses of every household and # of people as well as every person:In a wheelchair
Bedridden
On dialysis
On insulin
without transport
with surplus transport
with medical/first aid trainingetc. much more but you get the idea.

Well the U.S. will survive but we are headed into either a major recession or a major inflationary spiral or both, imo. I am struck with the similarities to the "guns and butter" approach of LBJ in the 60s that gave us stagflation by the end of the 70s. Unless Bush is willing to roll back the tax cuts and maybe actually raise them (a "windfall profits" tax on the oil companies, for example) I see no way of avoiding major economic pain about the time of the 08 presidential election or shortly thereafter.

Based on what happened in the 70s (inflation followed by recession and stagflation) which economists agree was likely a direct result of the inability of LBJ and then Nixon to control deficit spending. Well they don't hold a candle to what Bush has done so far and shows every sign of continuing to do. And by the way, it was the oil shocks in 1973 aand again in 1979 that contributed to making the inflation and stagflation even worse.